Getting married has long been thought to be an excellent career move for men, who tend to earn considerably more when hitched than when single. The question, of course, is whether the higher salaries are actually caused by marriage or merely reflect a correlation between the qualities that make a good mate and those that make a good employee. A partial answer is provided by two economists who took a sample of married and unmarried men, controlled for education level and age, and found that the married men earned 20 percent more than the single ones. Then the economists looked at identical twins (thereby controlling for factors such as upbringing, physical attractiveness, mental capability, and so on) and found an even more pronounced marriage effect: the married twins earned 27 percent more than their unmarried brothers. The authors cite what they call the "popular explanations" for this marriage premium—employers are biased toward married men, and marriage allows men to spend less time on domestic chores and more time in the office—and then offer one of their own. "Because the income of married men affects the well-being of their spouse and children," they write, married men are likely to "work harder and more assertively seek out raises and better job opportunities."

If you feel that the opposite sex isn't giving you the attention you so richly deserve, maybe you should consider making a change—a name change, that is. According to a preliminary study by an MIT cognitive scientist, the vowel sounds in people's names may have an impact on how others judge their attractiveness. Specifically, when the men in the study were assigned names with a stressed front vowel (a vowel sound spoken at the front of the mouth), they were rated as more attractive than when they were assigned names with a stressed back vowel. (In other words, good news for Dave, Craig, Ben, Jake, Rick, Steve, Matt; bad news for Lou, Paul, Luke, Tom, Charles, George, John.) In women the effect was reversed, and a stressed back vowel (Laura, Julie, Robin, Susan, Holly) boosted sex appeal, whereas a stressed front vowel (Melanie, Jamie, Jill, Tracy, Ann, Liz, Amy) had the opposite effect—to the author's disappointment, no doubt.

Considering refinancing your house? Maybe you ought to think twice. According to two economists at Goldman Sachs, the oft rumored housing bubble is real—and it's global. Goldman's research looks in depth at housing prices in the United States, the UK, and Australia, and estimates that prices are, respectively, 10, 15, and 29 percent higher than they ought to be based on market fundamentals. In America prices headed upward in the mid-1990s—with good reason, because housing was undervalued in the middle of the decade. Lower mortgage rates were the main driver, with each percentage-point decrease in interest rates producing about a five percent increase in housing value. When the bubble pops, the result will most likely hurt homeowners and help renters, since rents usually fall in a softer housing market.

—"House Prices: A Threat to Global Recovery or Part of the Necessary Rebalancing?" Mike Buchanan and Themistoklis Fiotakis, Goldman Sachs [This study is unavailable online.]

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

ET, Phone Earth

The first close encounter may be closer than you think—if by "close encounter" you mean a radio encounter over light-years of interstellar space. According to calculations by Seth Shostak, the chief astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (seti) Institute, if there is intelligent life elsewhere in our galaxy, advances in computer processing power and telescope technology will enable us to detect its transmissions within the next two decades. Shostak's projection relies on the admittedly speculative estimate that—based on the number of stars in the Milky Way, the number of stars likely to have planets, and the number of planets likely to have life—10,000 to one million alien radio transmitters may be broadcasting from within our galaxy. (Other opinion, he allows, "avers that no other contemporary, sentient galactic societies exist.") Shostak assumes, as do many other scientists, that computer processing power will continue to double every eighteen months for the next ten years (it has reliably done so for four decades in a row), and then double only every thirty-six months in the following decade. These increases will allow for ever faster canvassing of the galaxy, and for reception of alien signals somewhere between 2014 and 2027. Of course, the transmitting civilizations will be 200 to 1,000 light-years away, and sending a reply will take centuries. All the more reason to start thinking about what we're going to say.

Family-owned companies are bad for business, a new study argues—at least when they dominate a large chunk of a country's economy. Outside the United States and the United Kingdom, most major corporations are in the hands of a few wealthy families, rather than being owned by a wide network of shareholders. The power of these small families often extends far beyond the companies they own directly, thanks to a system of "control pyramids" in which they exercise indirect control over a slew of smaller companies. This concentration of corporate power doesn't merely leave a high percentage of wealth in the hands of billionaires (see chart)—it also retards growth, diminishes efficiency, and limits economic freedom. Moreover, "a tiny elite that cannot be sacked," as the study puts it, is likely to pursue "economic entrenchment," in which property rights and financial openness are curbed to protect a few families' economic and political prerogatives.

In a study called "The Scots May Be Brave but They Are Neither Happy nor Healthy" the authors report that—well, the title more or less tells the story. Despite rising economic fortune, self-reported well-being is lower in Scotland than elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Scots suffer from higher rates of depression than other residents of the UK, and from high rates of suicide and accidental death. This last is probably influenced by the amount of alcohol consumed in Scotland—which also has some relationship to the Scots' relative unhealthiness, manifested in rates of obesity, multiple sclerosis, asthma, and diabetes that are higher than elsewhere in Great Britain or in Europe as a whole. With all this to cope with, it's no wonder that middle-aged Scots have, on average, blood-pressure readings among the highest in the Western world.

It's the holy grail of authors. Its tabulations are shrouded in mystery. Its lucky fifteen are regularly stacked in front at bookstores. But does the New York Times best-seller list increase sales as well as reflect them? According to an analysis of the Times hardcover fiction titles conducted by a professor at Stanford Business School, the answer is yes—but primarily for authors making their first appearance on the list. It's true that Times best sellers sell much better than other books: in the twenty-six-week sample taken, the 205 titles that had appeared on the Times list accounted for 84 percent of all books sold. But the study uses raw sales data from various sources to argue that the Times list regularly makes mistakes in its picks—in 2001 and 2002, 109 works of hardcover fiction that should have made the list never cracked the Times's top fifteen—and then compares the sales of books that should have been listed but weren't to those of books that did make the list. It turns out that although having a book appear on the Times list for the first time can boost an author's sales by as much as 57 percent, the list's significance drops off sharply once an author has become well established. (For the John Grishams and Danielle Steels of the world, an appearance in the Times top fifteen has no discernible impact on sales.) As for the claim that best-seller lists create a herd mentality that crowds out other titles, the study finds that in fact the opposite may be true: a book's appearance on the list actually tends to boost sales for other books in the same genre.

Driving while talking on a cell phone can be more dangerous than driving drunk. A recent study ran a driving simulation comparing the response time of drivers conducting cell-phone conversations and drivers who were legally intoxicated (they drank "a mixture of orange juice and vodka"—in more technical language, a screwdriver). Although the intoxicated drivers tended to follow other cars more closely and brake more violently, the drivers conversing on cell phones exhibited a greater delay in their response to events on the road, and were more likely to be involved in a collision. (Interestingly, it made no difference whether the cell-phone drivers were using handheld or hands-free equipment.) The intoxicated drivers actually drove more slowly, and had a better braking response, than the study's control group (participants who were neither drunk nor talking on a cell phone). But before you toss away your phone and reach for another shot of tequila, it's worth noting that the screwdriver-drinking participants had a blood-alcohol level of only .08—drunk, but not that drunk.

Based on research done jointly by the branding firm Landor Associates and the polling firm Penn, Schoen & Berland, this chart shows some of the brands that likely Bush supporters, Kerry supporters, and undecided voters associate with the candidates.

Most Popular

Writing used to be a solitary profession. How did it become so interminably social?

Whether we’re behind the podium or awaiting our turn, numbing our bottoms on the chill of metal foldout chairs or trying to work some life into our terror-stricken tongues, we introverts feel the pain of the public performance. This is because there are requirements to being a writer. Other than being a writer, I mean. Firstly, there’s the need to become part of the writing “community”, which compels every writer who craves self respect and success to attend community events, help to organize them, buzz over them, and—despite blitzed nerves and staggering bowels—present and perform at them. We get through it. We bully ourselves into it. We dose ourselves with beta blockers. We drink. We become our own worst enemies for a night of validation and participation.

Even when a dentist kills an adored lion, and everyone is furious, there’s loftier righteousness to be had.

Now is the point in the story of Cecil the lion—amid non-stop news coverage and passionate social-media advocacy—when people get tired of hearing about Cecil the lion. Even if they hesitate to say it.

But Cecil fatigue is only going to get worse. On Friday morning, Zimbabwe’s environment minister, Oppah Muchinguri, called for the extradition of the man who killed him, the Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer. Muchinguri would like Palmer to be “held accountable for his illegal action”—paying a reported $50,000 to kill Cecil with an arrow after luring him away from protected land. And she’s far from alone in demanding accountability. This week, the Internet has served as a bastion of judgment and vigilante justice—just like usual, except that this was a perfect storm directed at a single person. It might be called an outrage singularity.

Most of the big names in futurism are men. What does that mean for the direction we’re all headed?

In the future, everyone’s going to have a robot assistant. That’s the story, at least. And as part of that long-running narrative, Facebook just launched its virtual assistant. They’re calling it Moneypenny—the secretary from the James Bond Films. Which means the symbol of our march forward, once again, ends up being a nod back. In this case, Moneypenny is a send-up to an age when Bond’s womanizing was a symbol of manliness and many women were, no matter what they wanted to be doing, secretaries.

Why can’t people imagine a future without falling into the sexist past? Why does the road ahead keep leading us back to a place that looks like the Tomorrowland of the 1950s? Well, when it comes to Moneypenny, here’s a relevant datapoint: More than two thirds of Facebook employees are men. That’s a ratio reflected among another key group: futurists.

Forget credit hours—in a quest to cut costs, universities are simply asking students to prove their mastery of a subject.

MANCHESTER, Mich.—Had Daniella Kippnick followed in the footsteps of the hundreds of millions of students who have earned university degrees in the past millennium, she might be slumping in a lecture hall somewhere while a professor droned. But Kippnick has no course lectures. She has no courses to attend at all. No classroom, no college quad, no grades. Her university has no deadlines or tenure-track professors.

Instead, Kippnick makes her way through different subject matters on the way to a bachelor’s in accounting. When she feels she’s mastered a certain subject, she takes a test at home, where a proctor watches her from afar by monitoring her computer and watching her over a video feed. If she proves she’s competent—by getting the equivalent of a B—she passes and moves on to the next subject.

Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

And if thy brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee. And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty: thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy winepress: of that wherewith the LORD thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee: therefore I command thee this thing today.

— Deuteronomy 15: 12–15

Besides the crime which consists in violating the law, and varying from the right rule of reason, whereby a man so far becomes degenerate, and declares himself to quit the principles of human nature, and to be a noxious creature, there is commonly injury done to some person or other, and some other man receives damage by his transgression: in which case he who hath received any damage, has, besides the right of punishment common to him with other men, a particular right to seek reparation.

Even when they’re adopted, the children of the wealthy grow up to be just as well-off as their parents.

Lately, it seems that every new study about social mobility further corrodes the story Americans tell themselves about meritocracy; each one provides more evidence that comfortable lives are reserved for the winners of what sociologists call the birth lottery. But, recently, there have been suggestions that the birth lottery’s outcomes can be manipulated even after the fluttering ping-pong balls of inequality have been drawn.

What appears to matter—a lot—is environment, and that’s something that can be controlled. For example, one study out of Harvard found that moving poor families into better neighborhoods greatly increased the chances that children would escape poverty when they grew up.

While it’s well documentedthat the children of the wealthy tend to grow up to be wealthy, researchers are still at work on how and why that happens. Perhaps they grow up to be rich because they genetically inherit certain skills and preferences, such as a tendency to tuck away money into savings. Or perhaps it’s mostly because wealthier parents invest more in their children’s education and help them get well-paid jobs. Is it more nature, or more nurture?

The Wall Street Journal’s eyebrow-raising story of how the presidential candidate and her husband accepted cash from UBS without any regard for the appearance of impropriety that it created.

The Swiss bank UBS is one of the biggest, most powerful financial institutions in the world. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton intervened to help it out with the IRS. And after that, the Swiss bank paid Bill Clinton $1.5 million for speaking gigs. TheWall Street Journal reported all that and more Thursday in an article that highlights huge conflicts of interest that the Clintons have created in the recent past.

The piece begins by detailing how Clinton helped the global bank.

“A few weeks after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, she was summoned to Geneva by her Swiss counterpart to discuss an urgent matter. The Internal Revenue Service was suing UBS AG to get the identities of Americans with secret accounts,” the newspaper reports. “If the case proceeded, Switzerland’s largest bank would face an impossible choice: Violate Swiss secrecy laws by handing over the names, or refuse and face criminal charges in U.S. federal court. Within months, Mrs. Clinton announced a tentative legal settlement—an unusual intervention by the top U.S. diplomat. UBS ultimately turned over information on 4,450 accounts, a fraction of the 52,000 sought by the IRS.”

During the multi-country press tour for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, not even Jon Stewart has dared ask Tom Cruise about Scientology.

During the media blitz for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation over the past two weeks, Tom Cruise has seemingly been everywhere. In London, he participated in a live interview at the British Film Institute with the presenter Alex Zane, the movie’s director, Christopher McQuarrie, and a handful of his fellow cast members. In New York, he faced off with Jimmy Fallon in a lip-sync battle on The Tonight Show and attended the Monday night premiere in Times Square. And, on Tuesday afternoon, the actor recorded an appearance on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, where he discussed his exercise regimen, the importance of a healthy diet, and how he still has all his own hair at 53.

Stewart, who during his career has won two Peabody Awards for public service and the Orwell Award for “distinguished contribution to honesty and clarity in public language,” represented the most challenging interviewer Cruise has faced on the tour, during a challenging year for the actor. In April, HBO broadcast Alex Gibney’s documentary Going Clear, a film based on the book of the same title by Lawrence Wright exploring the Church of Scientology, of which Cruise is a high-profile member. The movie alleges, among other things, that the actor personally profited from slave labor (church members who were paid 40 cents an hour to outfit the star’s airplane hangar and motorcycle), and that his former girlfriend, the actress Nazanin Boniadi, was punished by the Church by being forced to do menial work after telling a friend about her relationship troubles with Cruise. For Cruise “not to address the allegations of abuse,” Gibney said in January, “seems to me palpably irresponsible.” But in The Daily Show interview, as with all of Cruise’s other appearances, Scientology wasn’t mentioned.

Some say the so-called sharing economy has gotten away from its central premise—sharing.

This past March, in an up-and-coming neighborhood of Portland, Maine, a group of residents rented a warehouse and opened a tool-lending library. The idea was to give locals access to everyday but expensive garage, kitchen, and landscaping tools—such as chainsaws, lawnmowers, wheelbarrows, a giant cider press, and soap molds—to save unnecessary expense as well as clutter in closets and tool sheds.

The residents had been inspired by similar tool-lending libraries across the country—in Columbus, Ohio; in Seattle, Washington; in Portland, Oregon. The ethos made sense to the Mainers. “We all have day jobs working to make a more sustainable world,” says Hazel Onsrud, one of the Maine Tool Library’s founders, who works in renewable energy. “I do not want to buy all of that stuff.”

An attack on an American-funded military group epitomizes the Obama Administration’s logistical and strategic failures in the war-torn country.

Last week, the U.S. finally received some good news in Syria:.After months of prevarication, Turkey announced that the American military could launch airstrikes against Islamic State positions in Syria from its base in Incirlik. The development signaled that Turkey, a regional power, had at last agreed to join the fight against ISIS.

The announcement provided a dose of optimism in a conflict that has, in the last four years, killed over 200,000 and displaced millions more. Days later, however, the positive momentum screeched to a halt. Earlier this week, fighters from the al-Nusra Front, an Islamist group aligned with al-Qaeda, reportedly captured the commander of Division 30, a Syrian militia that receives U.S. funding and logistical support, in the countryside north of Aleppo. On Friday, the offensive escalated: Al-Nusra fighters attacked Division 30 headquarters, killing five and capturing others. According to Agence France Presse, the purpose of the attack was to obtain sophisticated weapons provided by the Americans.